Bruised
by beachglass5387
Summary: Loras Tyrell has never minded being bruised.


**Bruised**

Loras Tyrell has never minded being bruised. He likes it when his muscles ache after a hard day of fighting and the struggle to keep his eyes open seems more difficult than winning a joust. He remembers when he first began practice tilting as an eight-year-old and had been walloped with the sandbag that weighted the quintain so many times that his entire back had seemed purple. He had felt a surge of embarrassment when his father had seen the proof that his son wasn't learning as quickly as could be hoped in the bathhouse at Highgarden.

"I'll get better," he had sworn. "I'll practice harder than anyone. I don't mind if my whole body is black and blue."

His father had smiled at him fondly. "Of course the bruises don't bother you," he had said. "They're proof that you've been doing something useful!"

Loras had smiled back, delighted. "I'll practice until I'm the best," he had said. "Who's the best now?"

"The Kingslayer, I suppose," Mace Tyrell had said. "The young idiot."

"I'll be as good as the Kingslayer, then," Loras had said. He had not even known who the Kingslayer was.

His father had laughed and squeezed his shoulder. "Good lad. Maybe one day you will be," he had said, though Loras could tell that he didn't really believe it.

Loras hadn't really believed it either after he first saw Jaime Lannister joust. Loras had been eleven and new page at Storm's End. He had been allowed to watch Renly Baratheon help his brother the king with his armor for the melee and was nearly bursting from excitement at seeing his first real tourney. He had been thrilled to sit near Renly who, tall, strong, and fifteen, was fast becoming his hero.

"Did you see that?" Loras had said admiringly after the Kingslayer had done especially well in a bout against one of the Florents. Loras was good for his age, he knew, and his skill made it all the more apparent to him how good Lannister truly was.

"I saw," Renly had said. The older boy's eyes were still on Jaime Lannister, who, jousting over for the day, had removed some of his armor and seemed to be trying to stretch the cramps from his arms. Loras could tell from the expression on Renly's face that he admired the other man's skills.

Loras had thought that he would give anything from Renly to admire him as much. "Do you think someone can learn to be that good?" He has asked.

Renly's mouth had quirked. "You can learn some of it," he said. "But some of it you just have to be born with."

Loras hadn't had enough nerve to ask if Renly thought his new page had been born with the necessary skill, but he promised himself again that he would do nothing but practice until men looked at him the way that they looked at Jaime Lannister.

Loras sighs. He had practiced and practiced until he had beaten the Kingslayer. His fighting skills are everything that he had once hoped they'd be, but it somehow doesn't seem as important now that Renly is no longer alive to look on in admiration. He is almost disappointed that the heat of the bath is lessening the dull throbbing in his arms and legs – the physical pain is distracting.

He glances sidelong at Jaime Lannister, who is sitting submerged in the hot water of the bathhouse. He looks as exhausted as Loras feels. He is an incredibly attractive man, Jaime Lannister, even without his hand. His attractiveness doesn't matter much to Loras, though. Somehow, being around handsome men just makes him miss Renly more. His eyes flick from the hard line of Lannister's jaw to the strong curve of his shoulder and down to the mangled end of his arm. Loras is struck by a sudden urge to ask him what had happened to the laughing, carefree man he remembers from that first tourney. He wants to know where the Kingslayer found the strength to continue after he couldn't be that man anymore. He wants to know what to do now that he knows that it isn't enough to be the best.

Lannister catches Loras starring and Loras looks down quickly. Usually, he would have the nerve to hold the other man's gaze and dare him with his eyes to make a crack about his preferences or his masculinity or about Renly. The other brothers of the Kingsguard snicker about him often enough and he is sick of all of the insinuations that he wants their cocks in his ass. He doesn't. Most nights, Loras would welcome an excuse to fight, but tonight he is weary and heartsick and having more trouble than usual forgetting the past. It makes him almost sick to his stomach now to think of those summer days when Renly had been a king and he had been sworn to protect him.

Sometimes, when they were alone together, he would try to tell Renly about his worries that they might be outthought or outmaneuvered by the Lannisters or the Starks. Renly would smile and draw Loras against him for a kiss. "We are both young and strong and clever," he would say. "And the gods must surely favor us; I don't believe anyone in the seven kingdoms prays so well or so often as us." Loras would laugh and kiss Renly back; he had wanted to believe it as much as his king.

"Tyrell," the Kingslayer says and Loras forces himself to push his thoughts of Renly away and meet his commander's gaze. _Go on_, Loras thinks; _accuse me of wanting your cock. I'll cross this bathhouse and rip it off, see if I won't_. "I'm not going to have to stop you from drowning yourself, am I?"

"What?" Loras asks, thrown. The Kingslayer's voice seems no more accusatory than normal.

"I thought you were too proud to look so miserable," Lannister says, and Loras can't decide if the other man is mocking him or not.

"I'm too tired to be proud," Loras says, speaking the truth.

This startles a laugh from the Kingslayer. "You won't be of any use to the King if you keep practicing yourself into exhaustion."

"I serve the King as well as anyone and better than-" Loras starts angrily, but the Kingslayer holds up his left hand to silence him and Loras obeys, surprising both of them. Loras is still glaring at the Lord Commander; he suspects that the other man is trying to stop himself from laughing more. _It isn't right that he should always be laughing_, Loras thinks. It had always moderately annoyed him that Renly never seemed to take anything very seriously, and it enrages him that the Kingslayer seems always to be laughing at him.

"No one is questioning that you are one of the best fighters in the realm," Lannister says; Loras is somewhat mollified that Kingslayer has succeeded into arranging his face into something other than a smirk. "Why are training until you can barely move?"

"I move well enough. I have youth on my side, ser."

"But not sense," the Kingslayer says. "Look at yourself, Tyrell." The man looks Loras up and down meaningfully and Loras colors, following his gaze and noticing for the first time the severity of the bruises covering his body. Strange that he had not noticed before.

"No man can hope to avoid bruises," he says, shrugging.

"What are you trying to avoid?" the Kingslayer says lightly, as if it could not possibly matter less to him.

"I-"Loras does not know what to say. The older man has caught him off guard and his senses are too dulled from the combination of the heat of the water and the ache in his muscles to summon his usual bravado. He feels an idiot, sitting naked in a tub and staring at his commander without a word to say for himself.

"You are having a very difficult time reconciling the way you once thought things would be with the way they are," Jaime states.

"I'm-" Loras tries again, but the words seem to die in his throat. He does not know what is happening, but for some reason he feels a child again.

"Facing the unpleasant reality that you can be the best warrior in of your generation and still be unable to make the world into what you want it to be; grappling with the knowledge that no amount of tourney victories will keep the people that you love safe; awash in despair that you achieved everything you ever hoped and have nothing that you want." His tone makes it difficult to tell if he is serious.

Serious or not, Loras is overcome with the urge to tell the other man that that is exactly how it is. He wants to ask for advice, for help, for _something. _But he cannot. He is not the sort of man who shows weakness. He has his pride. Sometimes he thinks it is all he has.

The Kingslayer laughs. "Don't worry. I don't expect an answer. Anyway, I intend to drink a fair amount of red wine as soon as I get back to our White Tower and am like to forget anything you might choose to say."

"I do not believe that you are such a drunkard," Loras says, just to say something.

"True enough. I forgot that as Renly's squire you would have spent enough time to around Good King Robert to see what a real drunkard looks like."

"You should not speak so of the king you served," Loras says.

"I have been a brother of the Kingsguard since you were at your mother's tit, Ser Loras. I have earned the right to say that Robert was a drunk and Aerys a madman if it pleases me."

"Does it make you feel any better to say such things?" Loras had meant to sound scathing, but he can tell from the other man's face that he hadn't managed it.

"The truth rarely makes anyone feel better. I imagine you've found that out. Is that why you are fighting in the tourney yards as if your life depended upon every thrust?"

"What is it to you how I fight in the tourney yards?"

"At fifteen you were better than most men ever will be. You are not very large; I know how much work that must have taken. You have not been careless in the past."

"Careless?" Loras is both confused and angry.

"You're not practicing like a man who wants to maintain his skills. You are practicing like a man who wants to forget everything but his skill."

"As long as I am able to serve King Tommen well, what is it to any man how I practice?"

"Your duty is to the king, as is mine. But I also have a duty to the Kingsguard itself."

Loras opens his mouth to argue, but knows the truth of Jaime Lannister's words. Deserving of the honor or not, he is the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard.

"What would you have me do?" Loras asks, his voice sounding strange and toneless to his ears.

Lannister shrugs, the water rippling around him. "Think of your king. It won't do for him to grow up with so many reckless men as his heroes."

Loras cannot help but smile as he thinks of Tommen hanging over the rails of the tourney yards, Margaery with a hand on his back to make sure he didn't tumble to the ground, watching the practice fights wide-eyed. For all that he misses Renly, he likes the boy king. _Jaime Lannister's son_, he thinks. Loras has spent enough time at Storm's End to know there is nothing of the Baratheon look about the boy. Though, he supposes, there is little enough of Jaime Lannister in the boy's sweet smile and biddable nature.

"Boys always admire recklessness," Loras says.

"And live to regret it, if they are lucky," the Kingslayer says. Loras can tell from his voice that he doesn't mean it.

"Not enough to change," Loras says. He is surprised to find that he is smiling at the Kingslayer.

Jaime Lannister chuckles. "No, never enough to change. What would any of us be without our recklessness?"

"Bored," Loras says.

"And what could be worse than that?" Lannister says, smiling. It is a friendly smile, and Loras cannot help but feel a rush of warmth. It is good to be smiled at like that again.

"Being alone," Loras says without thinking. He feels his muscles tense and surge of panic. What is he doing saying such things to a Lannister? To anyone? He has to take it back. Maybe he can pass it off as a joke. He is sure that the Kingslayer is soon to be howling with laughter at the weakness of the Knight of the Flowers. Maybe he can find a way to –

"That is worse," Lannister says, for all the world sounding sincere. The smile is gone from his eyes and he looks at Loras seriously.

"Why are you being kind to me?" Loras asks, startled. "You hate me," he is horrified to hear that his voice sounds more resigned than defiant.

The Lord Commander reaches across to squeeze Loras's shoulder; it surprises him – he has learned that few people touch the knights of the Kingsguard either in camaraderie or to offer comfort. "Barristan the Bold hated me and it did not do either of us any good. I am telling you this because, good as you are, you're still young and I'm the one who is responsible for you," Jaime says before heaving himself out of the tub and donning his clothes.

Loras thinks about shouting that he can take care of himself. He thinks about saying that he would consider it an honor to be hated by the Kingslayer. He should at least say that he doesn't need advice or pity from cripple. But he doesn't; he is inexplicably glad that there is still someone who feels responsible for him, even if it is Jaime Lannister. "Thank you," he says.

"I trust you'll be proud and headstrong again tomorrow," Jaime Lannister says, smiling at him.

For once, the smile does not make Loras feel defensive. "Yes, ser," he says, almost smiling back.


End file.
